conscious vibration

31 December 2016

This year has been ridiculously intense, hard, and
frustrating... but I've managed to do some things -- channeling my rage into
creation. I've pushed myself as a writer, poet, and artist -- and this project
was visioned, created, and produced all in this year since the summer. In July,
I had an amazing week at the VONA/VOICES Writers of Color Workshop - Residency
with David Mura. This was life changing for me a writer and it gave me the
tools I need to push myself, my craft, my artistic writing self. I am
grateful. Out of that powerful experience, I went into another writing retreat with my
SPACE crew in Tobago - and Cosmic Evolution was born. I wrote a short story
that I then began to vision as a mixed media installation -- and I submitted a
proposal to the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas call for their 8th NationalExhibition. I was accepted :) and the piece grew and transformed into what you
will see below.

Close Up of Sculpture - representing Cosmic Evolution

"Cosmic Evolution" is a speculative fiction experience and multimedia
installation about how we vision futures for Caribbean and African Diaspora
peoples. Inspired by Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Caribbean
mangroves and sea, I ask what is our Earthseed vision of the future? This
artwork is my response and provocation for us to create wildly and boldly. To
seriously think about our survival and possible futures given the continued
assault on on Black, Brown, Migrant, Same-Sex loving, Queer, and Women's Lives
and the earth. The sculpture is a small-scale model of the evolution of our
beings and escape to the stars. (I must give a shout out and sincere gratitude
to my dearest friend Shalini Seereeram for her help with design and materials for the sculpture. She is boss artist and has design magic!) The rest of
installation includes 18 photographs, 11min 11sec video with mangroves and
storytelling. My work is inspired by the Mangrove forests of Trinidad and Tobago and created
through deep reflection of how we vision our Caribbean futures. I am thrilled
to be featured in the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas 8th National
Exhibition - OFFSITE at Hillside House. I went home on 16th December to Install
the piece and also had the fabulous opportunity to share the work at the
opening reception on the 17th and offer a reading/performance. Here are photos and some reflections of the opening and this experience of creating Cosmic Evolution.

“The Destiny of Earthseed is to
take Root among the Stars.”
–Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Cosmic Evolution is a provocation and speculative fiction experience
about how we vision our futures for Caribbean and African diaspora people –
Black, Brown, Migrant, Same-Sex Loving, Queer, and Women especially. This vision
began with a journey through the Mangrove forests in Tobago and deep reflection
on Octavia Butler’s dystopia novel Parable
of the Sower (imagining her creation of community survival through Earthseed).
It also emerges through the painful social and racial climate we are surviving
in the past few years of a so-called post-racial world (and the rise of Black
Lives Matter and Migrant Rights movements globally in response to overwhelming
violence, fear, and hate). And it comes to life thinking through the backlash
against Caribbean feminist and women’s movements for gender and sexual justice
and the continued struggles for gender and sexual rights and freedom for
Caribbean sexual minorities (LGBTQI) and gender non-conforming people. Cosmic Evolution is about survival and
possible futures given the continued assault on Black, Brown, Migrant, Queer,
and Women’s lives.This mixed
media installation shares a future vision of marginalised people evolving and
relocating to Space after spending
nine years under the mangrove forests of the Caribbean Sea. The future
storyteller (griot) explains the process of this cosmic evolution and how
people transformed and took flight to the stars, which is made possible through
the magical infusion of cultural artifacts, ancestral spirits, earth and sea vibrations,
and mangrove swamps. Cosmic Evolution
visions a future decolonised, where our minds, bodies, and spirits feel whole;
a future unbounded to capitalism, where communities thrive in harmony and
healing rooted in love and acceptance; a future where we co-exist with the
earth and all living creatures; a future where we are sexually, spiritually,
and socially free – with consent at the root and restorative justice the path.
To create our own possible Earthseed Future, we must do the work of pulling
from the past and present to evolve. This project seeks to ground us back into
the earth, sea, and ancestral memory, to reimagine the tools we need in order
to create better, possible, and livable futures.

What is your Earthseed Vision of
the Future?

Cosmic Evolution - Mixed Media Installation at Hillside House

Close Up of the Sculpture

Video surrounded by Photographs of the Mangroves which inspired my story

I took these photographs of the Mangrove Forests in Trinidad and Tobago.

I worked with NAGB Chief Curator Holly Bynoe to place the photographs and create this collage style effect.

Description of the work to accompany the installation

Promo for the Opening Reception and Reading at Hillside House

Reading at Hillside House for the Opening Reception -- NE8 Offsite.

I offered a Ritual after the reading/performance of my story Cosmic Evolution -- I opened the space with ancestor blessings and acknowledgement of land and people here before us. After storytelling, I shared my manifesto and Earthseed visioning of this new Earth/space and the kind of community I would want to create. I asked participants to join me in visioning of our Caribbean futures. I invited them to write down on pieces of fabric what magical artifacts or objects they would take with them AND/OR what kind of community or new world they would create. Each person left their message near the sculpture. And I gave each person who contributed a seed to keep with them for future visioning. It was a powerful ritual of exchange and visioning for me as an artist. This was my first solo performance art piece and I am forever grateful to the staff and curatorial team at NAGB for this amazing opportunity. I want to especially give thanks to Holly Bynoe for creating spaces and expansive visioning for what art is and how we can engage community. Thank you Holly! 💜

The sculpture with offerings from participants after the ritual

Close up of some of the offerings

Engaging the work - friends and family :)

Another Promo for the Opening featuring one of my photographs of the Tobago Mangrove Forest

Description of NE8

NE8 OFFSite Artists

Grateful for this experience and being able to share my art at home :)

Another view of the photographs and video.

I am also very grateful to be in the region these past few years -- teaching, working, living, and in the struggle for Caribbean freedom. Trinidad and Tobago is an ancestral home for me and is also now feeling completely homespace. I am happy to share my Cosmic Evolution first in my birthplace/home Nassau, Bahamas, but as it was created in and inspired by sweet T&T I will also be sharing it in Trinidad - soon soon!happy new year blessings & conscious vibes.may this new year bring renewal & fortitude for continuing struggles & resistance.choose our weapons wisely. vision boldly & stay rooted. conjure freedom tools. be defiant.peace love blessings in abundance! and more from me in 2017!Angelique (sistella black)

13 December 2016

for
those of us on the frontline,
waging battles, survivors of violence,
for Caribbean women and girls,
for Caribbean people who live and love
outside gender and sexual norms,
(especially lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex,
queer, and gender non-conforming folks)

These
past weeks of sharing painful stories, we have broken depths of silence,
Broken, we are not, broke open, we are, not damaged beyond repair,
We are breaking silences with fyah raised fists and voices beaming,

we listen, we hold, we rage, we bawl, we scream, we remember.

We share our own stories. Sometimes we don’t share. Sometimes we can’t. This
is time to bear witness. We share in this unearthing of our stories of sexual
abuse, harassment, assault, and violence. We wonder how to move forward. How to
escape. How to process. How to cope. How to stop this violence. How to hold
each other accountable. How to live and love. How to be whole again. How to
heal.

Krystal Nandini Ghisyawan and I have been asking these questions
over the past few years through our co-created art and reflection projects on
gender-based violence (GBV) in the Caribbean. This year, we decided to focus on
breaking silence and healing.

For
survivors of violence especially women and people who defy sexual and gender
norms, I hosted a healing workshop at Wholeness and Justice Counselling Centre
in Trinidad on 9 December. I created this workshop to facilitate healing space
for those of us most affected by gender based violence. This session focused on
women, LGBTQI folks, and gender non-conforming people because we experience the
brunt of hetero-patriarchal violence. These forms of violence affect us all but
women and sexual minorities experience gender based violence
disproportionately.

As
the #LifeinLeggings movement grows across
the Caribbean, we must create more spaces for us to find healing. We
have opened up wounds, we have shared painful memories, and we are bearing
witness to each other’s pain. How do we process these feelings and memories?
How do we support and protect each other? How do we channel our anger, pain,
rage, and sorrow into creativity, language, and action? How do we manage loved
ones reactions, feelings, and pain upon reading our stories? Can we create
change and transform our societies, communities, and families? What is
possible? Inspired by Audre Lorde's poetry and essays, my workshop seeks to
open space and use creativity for healing and transformation.

I
share here on consciousvibration the goals, rituals, and creative
exercises I developed to create space for healing and sharing. We had a
powerful and hard session on Friday – with nine of us – sharing, writing,
creating, and thinking through these questions of how we transform silence into
language and action. I will be hosting more of these workshops soon – and some
folks in the group want to meet up regularly.

The
Goals of the Workshop: For survivors of gender based violence, to release and
find healing through creativity and to transform silence into language and
action.

Defining
Self Care:

A self-initiated, deliberate act to establish and
maintain physical, mental and emotional health.

Creating spaces for reflection, healing, community
building, and balance.

Cleansing Healing Breathing Practice

To release stress and emotional build up; To cleanse
the body and regenerate; To clear the mind - ground and center self.

Writing
and Art – Creativity as a Path for Healing (channel rage into
creation)

Anger expressed and translated into action in the service of
our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of
clarification.Anger
is loaded with information and energy.–Audre
Lorde “Uses of Anger”

We have
opened up wounds, we have shared painful memories, and we are bearing witness
to each others' pain. How do we process these feelings and memories? How do we
support and protect each other? How do we channel our anger, pain, rage, and
sorrow into creativity, language, and action? How do we manage loved ones
reactions, feelings, and pain upon reading our stories? Can we create change
and transform our societies, communities, and families? What is possible?

My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not
protect you.–Audre
Lorde “Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”

As
survivors of gender based violence – we often push down the painful memories and this can create
a separation of selves – especially if it happened to us as children or teens.
We may have split and silenced parts of our selves to survive and cope.
Sometimes these are necessary strategies but long term can be damaging. Here
are some creative exercises to communicate with your other self or selves built
for survival and coping – for healing and transformation.

Creative
Exercises as pathways to healing:

1)
Stone Reflection (Earth – grounding self)

Pick
two stones – one as a reflection of your inner self or child self and the other
as the self you project to the world or your adult self. Write about each stone
and how they reflect these parts of you. Describe the surface, the edges, the
feelings that each stone evokes in you. Let the power of the earth come through
the stones. Feel how they ground you. Share your reflection.

2)
Love letter or drawing to child-teen-younger self (Air and Water – for healing)

Use
the elements of Air and Water – as a metaphor for channeling messages to your
younger self: write a love letter or create a drawing for your younger
self.

And
of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and
action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.

We
can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned
to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect
fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in
silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of the silence will
choke us.

The
fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break the
silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not
difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to
be broken.

Vision
your own transformation piece with FYAH – create, draw, paint, colour, write
poetry, or anything you want to make with your hands -- transform feelings,
anger, sadness, grief, pain, silence into something new that will incite, will
speak, will draw upon your energy and live beyond you.

18 November 2015

Months have flown by since my last update on the blogsphere... :( and now finally making some time to share updates! In the midst of too many projects, deadlines, teaching, writing, creating, and everything else I'm up to these days... I'm loving it all and immensely invested in all the work. And I'm overjoyed with being in the region (homespace) and working at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. There is much to report on and reflect... but for now -- wanting to share on conscious vibration that my book is out!!! :)

Cover Art "Emancipation Boat Cruise" John Beadle (1998)

My first scholarly book Resisting Paradise
is ready for launches, readings, and parties! After many years of
labour and love, research, writing, revising, and
writing some more, I'm thrilled to finally hold my book. Thanks so much to Repeating Islands, ARC Magazine, and Bahamian Art and Culture eMagazine for book launch announcements!

It feels good :) and I'm feeling good... Grateful for the opportunity to share and create... So grateful for the support of friends and family... and even more grateful to all the spirits and ancestors who create through me.

The
IGDS hosted a book launch for me on 28th October -- and it was a
beautiful event and opportunity to share and discuss my work. Here are
some highlights from the launch and promotions for the book.

Featured in the Trinidad & Tobago's Sunday Guardian, WOW Magazine | 25 October 2015 Thanks to Paula Lindo for the interview and promotion!

Giving thanks to all my T&T friends/fam who came out for the IGDS book launch on 28th October! I am so grateful! Special thanks to the entire staff at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, St. Augustine Unit - especially Sue Ann Barratt for being a fabulous host, Deborah McFee for organizing the event, Kathryn L Chan for all of her hard work in marketing, creating, branding the launch and promo materials for the book (postcards, bookmarks, stickers are all Kathryn's design brilliance!), Gabrielle Hosein for a beautiful vote of thanks, and to all the IGDS graduate students who push and inspire me. Finally -- give thanks to my fierce warrior-kin Lyndon Gill who offered an incredible reflection/review of my book. I am still beaming and feeling so blessed and humble to be in this community and doing this work. Looking forward to years of building and forging resistance. Here are some photos of the evening:

For more about the book and my process -- here is a published interview with Trinidad and Tobago's Newsday:

In Her Words: Angelique V Nixon | James Dupraj,

WMN magazine, Newsday, 15 November 2015, pp. 6-7

Angelique V Nixon is a Bahamian-born, Trinbago-based writer, artist,
teacher, scholar, activist, and poet. Her newest published title,
Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean
Culture was released in October. In the work, Angelique explores notions
of Caribbean paradise and how the tourism industry we are all too familiar with can be both exploitative and counter-intuitive to regional mobility.
“The process was long and hard – lots of reading, writing, revising,
and more writing,” she says of Resisting Paradise. The author reveals
that the book took many years to complete and there were even times she
believed it wouldn’t be finished. “But I pushed through and believed in
the importance of Caribbean people being at the centre of our knowledge
production and research.” Angelique is also a lecturer and researcher at
the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS), UWI St
Augustine. Her research, cultural criticism, and poetry have been
published widely. She is co-editor of the online multi-media collection
Theorising Homophobias in the Caribbean – Complexities of Place, Desire,
and Belonging. And she is author of Saltwater Healing: A Myth Memoir
& Poems, which is a limited-editionletterpress handbound chapbook
of original art and poetry (sold out). This book and selections from it are
currently on display at the Alma Jordan Library, UWI St. Augustine
campus, as well a display from her newest book. Today, she
shares with WMN some of the driving themes behind Resisting Paradise,
her personal relationship to the tourism industry, and divulges some of
the issues she tackles in her new book.

Author Angelique V. Nixon | Photo Credit: Margot Bethel

Can you tell us a bit
more about the book’s title?

The first part of the title – Resisting
Paradise came to me as I was reading poetry by two writers – Bahamian
poet Marion Bethel and Trinidadian-Bahamian poet Christian Campbell.
They are both very critical of tourism and how it affects Caribbean
culture and identity. Their poetry offered much needed
counter-narratives to stereotypical ideas of paradise. For me, being
born and raised in a tourist economy in the Bahamas, I completely
understood why they were so critical of these images of paradise. Also
in my studies and research, I found that tourism has serious effects on
cultural, racial, sexual, and class identity inside the region and in
the Caribbean diaspora. And so I write about these connections between
tourism, diaspora, and sexuality in Caribbean culture. And the book
focuses on Caribbean cultural producers who resist the powerful
production of paradise.

As Caribbean folk, we are often taught to look
at tourism as a saviour or to look upon tourism markets as viable and
illustrious options as career paths and corporate/economic investment.
Do you comment on this in the book, and what are your personal thoughts?
This issue is at the centre of the book! It is exactly why I
wrote it. Growing up in a tourist economy forged my consciousness around
this issue – the double bind of tourism and the extreme dependency much
of the region has on tourism. Further, as I share in the book, I worked
in the tourism and banking industry for years in the Bahamas before my
career in academia. I discuss how my own social and economic mobility is
deeply tied to the tourism industry. One of my goals was to think
through and offer alternatives to this double bind and expose the ways
that tourism can be incredibly unsustainable and exploitative. I also
wanted to show how Caribbean writers, artists, and cultural workers
offer alternative models to mass tourism in order to propose more
ethical and locally-led models. And I share ideas about investing in
ourselves – education, knowing our histories/herstories, and cultural
productions that are Caribbean focused – as a way to counter the
negative impacts of tourism. I also discuss ways we can be more
responsible and ethical Caribbean travelers and forge different
relationships to space and the region in particular. We are not immune
to the powerful and seductive images of paradise. And so when we as
Caribbean people travel, I ask us to think about how we relate to each
other and places we visit. For example, when we in Trinidad travel to
Tobago – what is that relationship? How do we show up as
visitors/tourists or local-foreign? What are our expectations of the
space? Do we see Tobago as Trinidad’s paradise? What are the tensions
that exist and why? These are the kinds of questions I discuss and
explore in the book. How do you link tourism, diaspora, and sexuality in the work? Why do you feel they need to be examined under the same lens?
I argue that tourism has deeply affected Caribbean cultural and sexual
identity. And I also explore how this affects Caribbean people inside
and outside the region. I discuss African Diaspora tourism and different
kinds of travel and relationship to space. I think deeply about how
Caribbean people living abroad and their children return home for
visits, for Carnival, for pleasure and to spend time with family and how
they participate in the business of tourism. This is why I bring these
three together to discuss the complicated relationships among them. How did growing up in a country heavily reliant on tourism affect the
way you view and interact with such? Did your relationship to it change
over the years?

When I was growing up in the Bahamas, it was either
banking or tourism service industry for job opportunities. I started
work in downtown Nassau at 14 with different summer and afterschool
jobs; then bartending at night and bank job in the day after high
school. My relationship changed over the years as I learned more in
college and graduate school about economics, history, and culture across
the Caribbean. I became more critical of tourism and wanted to search
for better ways for us to survive as a region. But I also experienced
and therefore respect the hustle of working in the tourist industry –
and so I don’t want to be overtly critical of people who have limited
choices either. I started to think about larger structural changes that
we needed as a region – and how we could forge resistance together. When examining Caribbean tourism, as with everything, there are pros
and cons - do you agree? Can you elaborate?

Yes, of course – pros and
cons. For me working directly in the tourism industry through service
jobs (bartending, waiting tables, retail, etc.) as a teenager, I met
people from all over the world – and I would say that opened up my mind
and perspectives to many things. I grew up really poor in a small place
and so getting to meet all different kinds of people was inspiring.
During my interviews with people working in the tourism and culture
industry, I also found this to be a positive aspect of tourism that
people spoke about again and again. As for cons, there are so many --
from being unsustainable and over-reliance on foreign investments to the
damaging environmental, social, and cultural effects of tourism. I
discuss these in my book throughout but I also share ways that Caribbean
cultural producers negotiate tourism. And so I offer ways for us to
vision and push against the production of paradise and create new
models. Some may argue that the façade of “paradise”,
especially as it relates to the Caribbean, continues to be entrenched in
our colonial histories. Please offer your thoughts on this idea of
“paradise”, and why do you believe there should be resistance?

Dominant
ideas about paradise are absolutely connected deeply to our colonial
histories that remain embedded in our education, political, economic,
and social fabrics across the region. As other Caribbean scholars have
argued, ideas of Caribbean paradise were built and sustained through
histories of slavery, colonialism, and indentureship that cultivated
structures of racism, class exploitation, sexism, and other oppressive
systems. There must be resistance to paradise because those dominant
images (myths and metaphors) of paradise continue to define the region
globally. There must be resistance to “paradise” because it is part of
the region’s legacy of resistance. We must resist, contest, and create
new images of ourselves that complicate and explode “paradise” because
we exist, we are not metaphors, as Caribbean writer Michelle Cliff so
beautiful puts it. My book seeks to answer this question that other
Caribbean scholars, writers, and artists have asked and grappled with:
what is the cost of producing “paradise” for everyone but ourselves? And
I seek answers through various forms of resistance.

Sexuality is a
topic that some may not link to tourism overtly, yet recently in
Trinidad and Tobago there have been arrests and investigations into
allegations of human trafficking. Do you believe tourism and the sex
trade are two sides of the same coin? Tourism and the sex
trade are certainly related and connected, but I don’t see them as two
sides of the same coin. It’s important to remember that much of human
trafficking involves domestic work/trade, which is just as exploitative
as sex trafficking. Also the sex trade operates inside and outside of
tourism industry. The way I discuss sexuality in relationship to tourism
is more about sexual labour and transactional sexual relationships that
exist in many ways because of the over-dependence on the tourism
economy. And finally, I examine the ways sexuality can be affected by
tourism – that is, sexual identity, practices, desires, and behaviors.
The book interrogates the sexual-cultural politics of tourism – even
when sex or sexuality is not explicit in tourism advertisements or
packages, it is always there under the surface. In other words, the
Caribbean tourism industry in its selling of Caribbean paradise is
always selling sex and culture. What do you hope both every day and
academic readers can gain from Resisting Paradise? I hope all readers
gain new insights into the ways that Caribbean cultural producers are
writing, creating, and asserting Caribbean subjectivity and sense of
self. And I hope readers learn more about the brilliant Caribbean
writers and artists who push us all to think and expand our
consciousness. I would like readers to think about resistance and how we
can build community together and fight in the struggle for social
justice and equality. What has the work taught you? The work
has taught me patience and perseverance as a writer and scholar. It has
also taught me to stand up for my beliefs (being an anti-racist, class
conscious, postcolonial feminist, womanist, same-sex loving,
revolutionary intellectual). It taught me that I do have a right to
theorise/create and be at the center of knowledge production, especially
as a black mixedrace Caribbean woman doing Caribbean studies. And the
work has reminded me that we must look harder for solutions and do
research differently – in open and expansive ways to be more inclusive
and fearless in our approaches. Please tell us some more about
your work with IGDS. What is on the horizon?I am teaching
undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Gender and Development
Studies. And I am working on a number of research and outreach projects
for the institute, as well as my own writing and research. My
current research areas include feminist praxis and discourse, Caribbean
sexualities, sexual labour, and social justice movements. I will be
working on my next scholarly book soon, and I’m in the process of
revising poems and writing new pieces for my second book of poetry. Where is Resisting Paradise available? It’s available on Amazon.com
and through the University Press of Mississippi website. It’s in
hardcover right now and so it’s really expensive. But I have copies that
I’m selling -- extending my author discount so it’s a bit cheaper. Feel
free to get in touch with me via email: angeliquevnixon@gmail.com. The paperback will be out next year or so, and then it will be much cheaper. The e-book is out as well on Kindle. Any additional information, links, or thoughts you would like to share
with our readership? I dedicated my book to “all the cosmic warriors and
moon-loving-conjure beings, who create boldly, cause trouble, and fight
for justice;” and to “the struggle to be black, woman, human, and
free.” This is the center of all my work as a writer, artist, teacher,
scholar, activist, and poet. Stay in touch with me Instagram/Twitter @sistellablack, Follow me on Facebook (Angelique V. Nixon), and
visit my blog: consciousvibration.blogspot.com.

And finally, I'm thrilled to be going home to Nassau for a Book Launch and Panel Discussion hosted by the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (NAGB) on 20th November! I willgive a book presentation and then engage in a discussionwith artist John Cox, activist Erin Greene, and COB lecturers Keithley Woolward and Nicolette Bethel. We will be discussing these questions and more that I grapple with in the book:

How do we Live &Imagine in “Paradise”? What is the relationship
between tourism and culture? How do gender, race, and sexual labour
intersect in this relationship? What are the (social and economic) costs
of producing “paradise”? How does tourism affect our identity? Can “Art
Tourism” (locally led) be a viable and more ethical model of tourism?
What are sites of rebellion and freedom?

The
Bahamas is featured prominently in the book: The cover
features Bahamian artist John Beadle's "Emancipation
Boat Cruise" (1998) which is housed in the NAGB's permanent collection. I discuss Bahamian art
throughout -- investigating Junkanoo as both tourist
product and form of resistance, my interview with Arlene Nash Ferguson
about Junkanoo and EduCulture, analysis of Bahamian artwork by Dionne Benjamin
Smith, Veronica Dorsett and Piaget Moss, as well as my interview with
John Cox about The Current and Art Tourism. The book also offers readings
of several Caribbean writers, including Bahamian poet Marion Bethel and Bahamian-Trinidadian poet Christian
Campbell. One of my chapters "Living and Imagining in Paradise: The
Culture of a Tourist Economy" is a case study of the Bahamas, in which I discuss several interviews I conducted with workers in the tourism and culture industries.

So for me, it is vital to have a discussion about the book in the Bahamas -- and to share my work there in a public forum. Since academic work is too often limited in accessibility -- I hope this event and others that I will organize around the book can work against that. I am driven by a feminist praxis and research ethic, which is how I approached the writing and research of the book. I plan to engage the sharing of the work in the same way. (Though the book is very expensive because the first printing is in hardcover, but it will be in paperback soon and much cheaper hopefully by next year! I work to balance that by extending my author discount at book launches/events -- and also giving books to my graduate students I'm working with in Trinidad and giving to friends and family as I can). Still working out the best practices while also promoting and selling the book -- so that it will go to second printing and paperback.

The Nassau Guardian ran a feature on the launch and discussion "The Way Forward"on 14 November 2015. More on this event soon!

I am getting ready for deep reasonings in what I know will be a vibrant, rich and necessary discussion.

About Me

WriterArtistTeacherScholarActivistPoet. Community Worker. Subversive Radical. Cynical Idealist. Polyrhythmic lover. Cosmic Warrior. Afro-Caribbean. Black. Woman. Trouble Maker. Revolutionary Intellectual in Progress. I have been womanish, long time, and so I dare to imagine a world where people of color can be human and free. I dream and breathe revolution and liberation on many fronts—sexually, spiritually, economically, socially, and radically. I see hetero-sexist patriarchy and white supremacy as preventing movement and advancement for humanity.